It was so refreshing for us. We really enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you so much.
Do it.
Can you give us advice? How do you make this eight, nine sleep? How do you organize your day? Of course we can always complain, like we live during war, a raise, young mother, but you promote this philosophy of sleeping wise. Tell our audience and listeners.
And my final for an advocate of sleep as a person today who slept very little and because of that was rude to the colleagues, unfortunately, a lot of them. I know how harmful it would be.
Not everybody. Not every society. There were societies which were democratic and went the other way. But somehow, there are not so many. There was something that worked.
I wanted to say the other things, and formulate the question differently. Not about the concerns of Taiwanese democracy, I actually want to understand why democracy works in Taiwan, why this society, after 37 years of martial law, made it.
They’re working hard. They don’t forget what it is. They are short because we have the roles with Angelina. She’s really sometimes concerned, and I’m always this optimist.
Yeah. We really, really appreciate it. It is felt.
Are you learning both from our mistakes but also our solutions? As it’s written in one of your platforms, how do you generally feel about what’s going on with our war against us? How do you feel about it?
You mentioned that Taiwan is learning from Ukraine. I want to understand more. Is it like learning because you saw something happening and you know that’s what we should do? Or you’re really seeing clearly some particular things which Ukraine is doing?
What is important for Taiwan to be prepared from the security point of view, from the digital security point of view? I’m speaking more from now, we are now concerned about the dependency on Starlink. That kind of thing. That was something new. It’s a new concern, which was not ...
There are other things you need to, I love the phrase you said that we are an earthquake country, so you’re always expecting something that’s because it couldn’t be planned on the question like, what do you think will happen with China? You see, like we’re living here and the ...
In other talks you…No, but I just then would say what do you do from the security point of view? Because you’re speaking a lot about all these attacks like the real attacks, because yes, cyber is the way of waging the war.
For you, how do you define this? What is for you being nonpartisan? How did you navigate in the political environment? And were there red lines? How you define all the facts? Being a Taiwanese is like, it’s your country you built, you fought, you do, you live for it. ...
I know with every Taiwanese almost we speak, they all speak, they’re expecting or being afraid of the invasion and they’re concerned that there is disinformation, you speak so much about cyber attacks all the things.
Who is a political opponent, and where is a genuine sentiment? How do you put maybe for yourself some red lines? What is for you is being nonpartisan navigating in this environment, but then also it’s I can say, I mean, in Ukrainian, there is a threat of China.
First of all, it’s a country. There are existing parties. There are existing political views. Sometimes for others also, it’s tricky. Who are the agents? Who is a paid kind of troll, what is a campaign, and where is…
Like, I know you are nonpartisan, but can you really express your opinion on China, on things, on that? Still what I wanted to say is that when we are coming here as Ukrainians, we speak to people in Taiwan and they are saying it’s a very polarized society today, ...
In most cases, it’s kind of a macro level. Something else, we hear in Taiwan. When I was also listening to quite a few new interviews of yours there was one which was very peculiar for me because the anchor of a very classical media station was very much pushing ...
How then you compete in this competition if you are a government, if you are a public interest journalist, public broadcaster? How do you, I mean, even enter this competition?
I’m rather saying that by default, we figure out that every single one of our research, that people are more moderate. Then it gives…
Yeah. So the point was that, actually, you really need, first of all, to answer the real questions to the real people. We’re not creative enough to think about, like how you make it in a humorous way or competition way. But the findings were quite clear. You really need ...
[laughter]
But yeah. It’s not funny.
People felt offended because they said I’m not crazy. I don’t believe that there would be problems if there were a vaccine.
The problem was that the quality media very good media including like youngster’s media, also we’re already starting little by little do some kind of debunking and later figure out during the social media, during the focus group that this kind of like humor approach in a way when you ...
Yeah. They believe. They believe. These are obvious. But the absolute majority, we’re really having a lot of real concerns, if I have a pregnant wife, if I have a small kid, if my mother has three diseases and she’s 96.
And we did the point and the research. What do people want to know and what are their concerns about vaccination? And then we figure out that really by the numbers, around seven percent people believe in conspiracies.
It took kind of months as far as…
Probably the Russians would invent their vaccine, because there was a discussion. Vaccines were not there. So we really, back then secured some funding for the research. It took us some time because vaccines were still not there.
We started to speak about how you speak about the COVID. But by the way, not when vaccination started. Way ahead was about one of our cofounders Tetiana Peklun, who said, look. Sooner or later, vaccines would be invented. Sooner or later, they would be invented. It will be summer. ...
I would allow us to also share our experience because it was also pivotal. When we were setting up our organization, we were planning to work on human rights and how to reach out to the people on occupied territories. Exactly on that day is when we really decided to ...
There was another kind of competition because what I understand, there is something in human nature to argue as well, especially online, as we said, that you made a competition for the people about what vaccine is better?
You laughed. It worked.
What is your take on actually what is going on? How can you promote something else? What is your argument? Aren’t you concerned as well that that would be singularity? Instead of plurality because it’s for them. It’s not singularity. It looks like that singularity is enforced today.
Also on a philosophical level because people have now for just the last half year, of course we were living the context of the war against Ukraine, but wherever you go, in the media, anywhere, people are just freaking out because of AI. You know they’re afraid, afraid, afraid. And ...
It can be the rule of a couple autocrats, who are just very much enlightened by knowing algorithms and the way how to work, could be also very rich. We can speak about Elon Musk. We can speak about what’s going on in Facebook. What is your take on that?
We are where we are today in the world when we see a bit of a backslash when community notes were popular, but now with everything which is happening in social media, actually let’s say, liberals and progressive are very much afraid of technology like, because you see that it ...
We also have two sons in law. We have a son-in-law, if we have a son.
Because you have kind of a particular tradition where there is no culture of…
How do you insert democracy in that? Why do you think it’s critical for you? Why is it such a priority issue for you? On an ideological level, why is it more of a priority than building a lot of good services?
Is it participation or technology, and how you enforce this principle to the people, to the government, that it’s not just user-friendly as we today say. We’re speaking about user-friendly services for the people, but it’s not about democracy too much.
That’s why for me the question is, actually what is at heart? Because it’s all about digital technology. All is good for people. But what makes your approach you know, what is at heart of it?
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. So it’s so-called participation.
Everything is about the state providing the service, but there is no other, it’s a good idea, but there is no philosophy of participation. It’s a very different idea from the Minister of Digital Affairs.
After listening to a lot of and looking at what makes Taiwanese approach different, what is ours is just clearly services for the people. It’s purely about services. Make them easy. They help to fight corruption for instance. Transparency helps to fight corruption, access to documents.
If, for instance, by 2022, we didn’t have this service, that would be really, really very bad, tough, great anxiety, crisis, and whatsoever. This platform is used on numerous things, logistics, and now about the military draft.
